The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

by Richard Bach

  "I can tell, just looking, that you have played the piano for a long time, Ms. Parrish. Just looking at the music there, the Beethoven sonatas on the yellowed paper with the old pencilmarks in amongst the notes. Let me guess . . . since you were in high school?"

  She shook her head no. "Before that. When I was a little girl I made a paper keyboard to practice at, since we didn't have money for "a piano. Before that, before I could walk, my mother says I crawled to the first piano I ever saw and tried to play it. From then on, music was all I wanted. But I didn't get it for a long time. My parents were divorced; my mother got sick; my brother and I bounced from foster-home to foster-home for a while."

  I clenched my jaw. There's a grim childhood, I thought. What's it done to her?

  "When I was eleven, my mother got out of the hospital and we moved to what you'd call the ruins of a pre-Revolu-tionary War house, crumbling great big thick stone walls, rats, holes in the floors, boarded-up fireplace. We rented it for twelve dollars a month, and Mom tried to fix it up. One day she heard about an old upright piano for sale, and she bought it for me! It cost her a fortune, forty dollars. But it changed my world; I was never the same again."

  I inched out on another limb. "Do you remember the lifetime when you played the piano before?"

  "No," she said. "I'm not too sure I believe in other lifetimes. But there is one funny thing. Music that's no later than Beethoven, than the early 1800s, it's as if I'm relearn-ing, it's easy, I seem to know it at first sight. Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart-like meeting old friends. But not Chopin, not Liszt . . . that's new music to me."

  "Johann Sebastian? He was an early composer, early 1700s. . . ."

  "No. I have to study him, too."

  "If somebody played the piano in the early 1800s," I asked, "they'd have to know Bach, wouldn't they?"

  She shook her head. "No. His music was lost, it was forgotten till the mid-1800s, when his manuscripts were rediscovered and published again. In 1810, 1820, nobody knew anything about Bach."

  The hair quivered at the back of my neck. "Would you like to find out if you lived then? I read it in a book, a way to remember lifetimes. Want to try it?"

  "Maybe sometime . . ."

  Why is she reluctant? How can such an intelligent person not be sure that there is more to our being than a flash-bulb in eternity?

  Not long after that, at something past eleven in the evening, I checked my watch. It was four o'clock in the morning.

  "Leslie! Do you know what time it is?"

  She bit her lip, looked for a long moment to the ceiling. "Nine?"

  sixteen

  "WAKING AT seven to fly to Florida is not going to be pleasant, I thought, after she dropped me back at my hotel and drove away in the dark. To stay up past ten P.M. was unusual for me, remnants of the barnstormer who rolled up under the wing an hour past sundown. To go to sleep at five, wake at seven and fly three thousand miles will be a challenge.

  But there had been so much to hear from her, so much to say!

  It won't kill me to go without a little sleep, I thought. With how many people in this world can I listen and talk till four, till long after the last cookie has disappeared, and not feel the least tired? With Leslie, and with whom else? I asked.

  I fell asleep without an answer.

  seventeen

  "LESLIE, FORGIVE me for calling so early. Are you awake?" It was the same day, just past eight A.M. on my watch.

  "I am now," she said. "How are you this morning, wookie?"

  "Do you have time today? We didn't talk long enough last night, and I thought if your schedule allows, we might have lunch. And dinner, maybe?"

  There was a silence. I knew at once I was imposing on her, and winced. I shouldn't have called.

  "You said you were flying back to Florida today."

  "Changed my mind. I'll go tomorrow."

  "Oh, Richard, I'm sorry. I'm going to have lunch with Ida, then I have a meeting this afternoon. And a dinner-meeting, too. I'm sorry, I'd love to be with you, but I thought you'd be gone."

  That'll teach me, I thought, for making assumptions. What made me think she's got nothing to do but sit and talk with me? I felt instantly alone.

  "No problem," I said. "It's better I take off, anyway. But may I tell you how much I enjoyed our evening last night? I could listen to you, talk with you till the last cookie in the world is crumbs. Do you know that? If you don't know that, let me tell you!"

  "Me too. But all those cookies that Hoggie feeds me, I've got to starve for a week till you'll be able to recognize me again, I'm so fat. Why can't you like seeds and celery?"

  "Next time I'll bring celery seeds."

  "Don't forget."

  "You go back to sleep. I'm sorry I woke you. Thanks for last night."

  "Thank you," she said. " 'Bye."

  I hung up the telephone, began laying clothes into my garment-bag. Is it already too late to leave Los Angeles and fly so far east before dark?

  I did not relish night-flying in the T-33. An engine flame-out, any forced landing in a heavy fast airplane is difficult enough in the daytime; black night outside would turn it thoroughly unpleasant.

  If I'm wheels-up by noon, I thought, I'll be in Austin, Texas, by five, their time, off at six, Florida by nine-thirty, ten o'clock their time. Any light left at ten o'clock? None.

  Oh, so what? The T has been a reliable airplane so far . . . one small mystery hydraulic-leak, the only problem I haven't fixed. But I could lose all the hydraulic fluid and it wouldn't be a disaster. Speed-brakes wouldn't work, ailerons would get hard to move, wheel brakes weak. But it'd be controllable.

  There was the faintest foreboding, as I finished packing and thought my way through the flight. I couldn't see myself landing in Florida. What could go wrong? Weather? I promised never to fly through thunderstorms again, so I probably wouldn't do that. Electrical system failure?

  That could be a problem. Lose electrical power in the T and I lose fuel boost pumps from the main-wing and leading-edge tanks, that leaves tiptanks and fuselage fuel only to fly on. Most of the instruments go out. All radio and all navigation equipment fails. No speed-brakes, no wing-flaps. Electrical failure means a high-speed landing, needs a long runway. All the lights are gone, of course.

  The generator, the electrical system has never failed, hasn't whispered that it plans to fail. This airplane is not the Mustang. What am I worried about?

  I sat on the edge of the bed, closed my eyes, relaxed and visualized the aircraft, imagined it floating in front of me. Scanned it smoothly from nose to tail, watching for something wrong. Just a few minor spots showed up ... the tread on one tire was nearly smooth, a dzus fastener on the plenum chamber door was worn, the tiny hydraulic leak way in the middle of the engine compartment that we hadn't found. Definitely no warning, telepathically, that the electrical system or any system was going to blow up. And yet, when I tried to visualize myself arriving in Florida tonight, I couldn't do it.

  Of course. I wouldn't go to Florida. I'd land before dark, somewhere else.

  Even so. I could not see myself walking away from the T-33 this afternoon anywhere. Such an easy thing, it ought to be, to watch that in my mind. There I am, engine shut

  down; can you see that, Richard? You're shutting the engine down at some airport where you've landed. . . .

  I couldn't see it.

  How about final approach? Surely you can see the turn, the runway swinging majestically up from earth, landing gear is down, three little wheel-down pictures to show it's locked?

  Nothing.

  Well, heck, I thought. Not my electrical powers failed today but my psychic ones.

  I reached for the phone and called the weather station. It would be fine all the way to New Mexico, the lady said, then I'd overtake a cold front, thunderstorms with tops to 39,000 feet. I'd clear the thunderstorm-tops at 41,000 if the T could stagger up that high. Why couldn't I visualize myself landing safely?

  One more callv to the hangar.<
br />
  "Ted? Hi, it's Richard. I'll be down in about an hour- would you roll out the T, make sure she's got full fuel? Oxygen's OK, oil's OK. She might take half a pint of hydraulic fluid."

  On the bed I laid out maps, took notes of the navigation frequencies, headings, altitudes I'd need in flight. I computed times en route, fuel burned. We could climb to 41,000 if we had to, but just barely.

  I picked up maps and baggage, checked out of the hotel and took a taxi to the airport. It will be nice to see my. Florida ladies again. I suppose it will be nice.

  Baggage stowed in the airplane, gun-bay doors double-locked and safetied, I climbed the ladder to the cockpit, took my helmet from its bag and hung it on the canopy bow. Hard to believe. In twenty minutes this airplane and I will

  be climbing up through four miles high, closing on the Arizona border.

  "RICHARD!" Ted yelled from the office door. "TELEPHONE! YOU WANT TO TAKE IT?"

  "NO! TELL 'EM I'M GONE!" And then from curiosity, "WHO IS IT?"

  He asked the phone and shouted back. "LESLIE PAR-RISH!"

  "TELL HER JUST A MINUTE!" I left the helmet and oxygen mask hanging and ran to answer.

  By the time she picked me up at the airport, the airplane's ground-safety pins were pushed back in place; intake and tailpipe covers on; canopy closed, locked and covered and the big machine rolled back into the hangar for another night.

  That's why I couldn't visualize myself landing, I thought, I couldn't visualize that future because it wasn't going to happen!

  Baggage in the trunk, I slid into the seat next to her. "Hi, little tiny wookie just like all the other wookies only an awful lot smaller," I said, "I'm glad to see you! How come your schedule got cleared up?"

  Leslie drove a sand-colored fluff-velvet luxury car. After we had seen the film with the wookie in it, the car got renamed Bantha, after a fluffy-mammoth sand-creature in the same picture. It pulled smoothly away from the curb, carrying us into a river of different-color Banthas migrating everywhere at once.

  "For as little time as we have together, I thought I could shift things around a bit. I do have to pick up some things at the Academy, and then I'm free. Where would you like to take me for lunch?"

  "Anywhere. Magic Pan, if it's not crowded. It has a no-smoke place, didn't you say?"

  "It'll be an hour waiting, at lunchtime."

  "How much time do we have?"

  "How much do you want?" she said. "Dinner? Movie? Chess? Talk?"

  "Oh, you sweetie! Did you cancel your whole day for me? You don't know how much that means."

  "It means that I'd rather be with a visiting wookie than with anyone else. But no more hot-fudge and no more cookies and no more nothing bad! You can eat bad things if you want, but I am back on a diet to pay for my sins!"

  As we drove, I told her about the curious experience of the morning, about my extrasensory aircraft and flight checks, about strange times in the past when they had been remarkably accurate.

  She listened courteously, carefully, as she did whenever I talked about experiments with the paranormal. I sensed behind the courtesy, though, that she listened to find explain-ings for events and interests she dared not consider before. Listened as though I were some friendly Leif Ericson, returned with snapshots of a land she'd heard about but not explored.

  Car parked near the offices of the Motion Picture Academy, she said, "I won't be a minute. You want to wait or come in?"

  "Ill wait. Take your time."

  I watched her from a distance, in a noontime crowd of sidewalkers in the sun. Modestly dressed, she was, a white summer blouse over a white skirt, but my, how heads did turn! Every male in a moving hundred-foot circle about her slowed to watch. The honey-wheat hair flew loose and

  bright as she hurried to catch the last seconds of the walk signal. She waved thank-you to a driver who waited for her, and he waved back, well rewarded.

  What a captivating woman, I thought. Too bad we aren't more alike.

  She disappeared into the building, and I stretched out across the seat, yawned. To use this time, I thought, why not get a full night's sleep? That will require an autohypnotic rest of about five minutes.

  I closed my eyes, took one deep breath. My body is completely relaxed: now. Another breath. My mind is completely relaxed: now. Another. / am in a deep sleep: now. I shall waken the instant Leslie returns; as refreshed as from eight hours of deep, normal sleep.

  Autohypnosis for rest is especially powerful when one hasn't slept but two hours the night before. My mind plunged into darkness; sound in the streets faded away. Caught in deep black tar, time stopped. Then in the midst of that charcoal dark,

  ULIGHTl!

  As if a star fell on me, ten times ten brighter than the sun, and the blast from the light of it knocked me deaf.

  No shadow no color no heat no glare no body no sky no earth no space no time no things no people no words just

  LIGHT!

  I floated numb in glory. It isn't light, I knew, this immense unstopping brilliance bursting through what once had been me, it isn't light. The light, it merely represents, it stands for something else brighter than light, it stands for Love! so intense that the idea of intense is a funny feather of thought next to how huge a love engulfed me.

  JAM!

  YOU ARE! AND LOVE: IS ALL: THAT MATTERS!

  Joy exploded through me and I tore apart, atom from atom, in the love of it, a matchstick fallen into sun. Joy too intense to bear, not another instant! I choked. Please, no!

  The moment I asked, Love retreated, faded into the night of noontime Beverly Hills, northern hemisphere third planet smallish star minor galaxy minor universe tiny twist of one belief in imagined spacetime. I was a microscopic life-form, infinitely large, stumbled backstage of its playhouse, caught a nanosecond glance of its own reality and nearly vaporized in shock.

  I woke in the Bantha, heart pounding, my face soaked in tears.

  "AH!" I said aloud. "Al-ai-ai!"

  Love! So intense! If it were green, it would be a green so transcendently green that even the Principle of Green couldn't have imagined . . . like standing on a huge ball of, like standing on the sun but not the sun, there were no ends, no horizons to it, so bright and NO GLARE, I looked eyes open into the brightest . . . and yet I had no eyes I COULDN'T STAND THE JOY of that Love. . . .It was as if I dropped my last candle in a black cavern and after a while a friend, to help me see, she lit a hydrogen bomb.

  Next to the light, this world . . . ; next to that light, the idea of living and dying, it is simply . . . irrelevant.

  I sat blinking in the car, gasping air. Lordy! It took ten minutes' practice, learning to breathe again. What . . . Why . . . Ai!

  There a blonde-and-smile flash above the sidewalk, heads turning in the crowd to watch, and in a moment Leslie opened the door, piled envelopes on the seat, slid behind the wheel. "Sorry to be so long, wook. It was mobbed. Did you melt to death out here?"

  "Leslie, I've got to tell you. The most . . . something just happened . . ."

  She turned in alarm. "Richard, are you all right?"

  "Fine!" I said. "Fine fine fine fine."

  I stabbed at saying, told her in fragments and fell silent. "I was sitting here, after you left, closed my eyes . . . Light, but it wasn't light. Brighter than light, but no glare, no hurt from it. LOVE, not the fake broken syllable, but Love that IS! like no love I've ever imagined. AND LOVE! IS ALL: THAT MATTERS! Words, but they weren't words, or even ideas. Has this ever ... do you know?"

  "Yes," she said. And after a long moment remembering, she went on. "Up in the stars, when I left my body. A oneness with life, with a universe so beautiful, a love so powerful the joy made me cry!"

  "But why did it happen? I just, I was going to catch a quick hypno-nap, done it a hundred times! This time, POW! Can you imagine joy so much you can't stand it, you beg to turn it off?"

  "Yes," she said. "I know. . . ."

  We sat together, wordless for a while. Then she sta
rted the Bantha and we lost ourselves in traffic, already celebrating our time together.

  eighteen

  EXCEPT FOR chess between us, there's no action. We don't climb mountains together or run rivers or fight revolutions or risk our lives. We don't even fly airplanes. The most adventurous thing we share is a plunge into the traffic down La Cienega Boulevard after lunch. Why does she charm me so?

  "Have you noticed," I asked as she turned west on Mel-rose for home, "that our friendship is completely . . . ac-tionless?"

  "Actionless?" She looked at me as startled as if I had touched her. "Oh, you. Sometimes it's hard to know when you're kidding. Actionless!"

  "No. Really. Shouldn't we be skiing cross-country, surfing to Hawaii, something energetic? Heavy exercise for us is lifting a chess-queen and saying 'Check' at the same time. Just an observation. I've never had a friend quite like you,

  148

  before. Aren't we awfully cerebral; don't we talk too much?"

  "Richard," she said, "chess and talk, please! Not throwing parties, throwing money around, which is the preferred exercise in this town."

  She turned the car onto a side-street, into her driveway, stopped the engine.

  "Pardon me for a minute, Leslie. I'm going to run home and burn every dollar I have. It'll take a minute. . . ."

  She smiled. "You don't have to burn it. It's fine if you have money. The thing that matters to a woman is whether you use it to try to buy her. Be careful you never try that."

  "Too late," I said. "I've already done it. More than once."

  She turned to me, leaning back against the door of the car. She made no move to open it.

  "You? Why do I find that such a surprise? Somehow I can't see you doing . . . Tell me. Have you bought any good women?"

  "Money does strange things. It scares me to watch, to see it happening firsthand to me, not a movie but nonfiction firsthand, real life. It's as if I'm the odd man in a love-triangle, trying to force myself between a woman and my money. A lot of cash is still a new thing to me. Along comes some very nice lady who doesn't have much to live on, who's just about broke, her rent's overdue, do I say, 'I won't spend a dime to help you'?"